NEW YORK (AP) — Google said Sunday it is working with Walmart, Shopify, Wayfair and other big retailers to expand the shopping capabilities of its artificial intelligence chatbot, turning its Gemini app into a virtual merchant and assistant.
Walmart and Google said the instant checkout feature will allow customers to make purchases from some businesses and a range of payment providers without leaving the Gemini chat room they use to find products.
The announcement was made on the first day of the National Retail Federation’s annual convention in New York. The role of artificial intelligence in e-commerce and its impact on consumer behavior is expected to dominate the three-day event.
“The shift from traditional web or app search to agent-led commerce represents the next great evolution in retail,” John Furner, Walmart’s incoming president and CEO, said in a joint statement with Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichaei.
Here’s how Google’s new AI-powered shopping feature works: If a customer asks what gear they need for a winter ski trip, for example, Gemini will return the items from participating retailers’ inventory.
In the case of Walmart, customers who link their Walmart and Gemini accounts will receive recommendations based on their past purchases, and any products they decide to purchase via the chatbot can be integrated with their existing Walmart or Sam’s Club online shopping cart.
OpenAI and Walmart announced a similar agreement in October, saying the partnership would allow ChatGPT members to use instant checkout to purchase nearly any item on Walmart’s website except fresh food.
Google, OpenAI and Amazon are all racing to create tools that enable seamless AI-powered shopping by letting chatbot users go from browsing to buying in the same program, rather than having to go to a retailer’s website to complete a purchase. The competition between OpenAI and Google has intensified in recent months.
Ahead of the recent holiday shopping season, OpenAI launched instant checkout in ChatGPT, allowing users to purchase products from select retailers and Etsy sellers without leaving the app.
San Francisco software company Salesforce estimates that artificial intelligence impacted $272 billion, or 20% of total global retail sales, in some way during the holiday shopping season.
Gemini’s AI-assisted shopping feature will initially be available only to U.S. users, but it plans to expand to international markets in the coming months, Google said.
